The American Blackbelly is a modern American hybrid breed of sheep. It is a hair sheep, growing a hair coat rather than a wool fleece.
It was developed in Texas by crossing sheep of the Barbados Black Belly and Rambouillet breeds with Corsican mouflon. This produced a horned animal with a heavier carcase and increased muscle mass compared to the original black-bellied breed. It is closely similar to the Barbado, another Texas hybrid with similar origins.
Characteristics
The American Blackbelly has the coloration of the Barbados breed – a brown hair coat ranging from light fawn to deep mahogany, with black underbelly and black insides of the ears and legs. Rams are horned, sometimes heavily so; ewes are usually polled, but may also be scurred or horned. It is a small sheep, with heights and weights closely similar to those of the Barbados BlackBelly: ewes weigh some and stand at the shoulder; rams weigh from with a height of some .
Use
The sheep are usually reared for trophy hunting, but can also be raised for meat or kept for conservation grazing.
References Barbara Rischkowsky, Dafydd Pilling (editors) (2007). List of breeds documented in the Global Databank for Animal Genetic Resources, annex to: The State of the World's Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Rome: Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. . Archived 23 June 2020.
Valerie Porter, Lawrence Alderson, Stephen J.G. Hall, D. Phillip Sponenberg (2016). Mason's World Encyclopedia of Livestock Breeds and Breeding (sixth edition). Wallingford: CABI. .
Valerie Porter, Ian Lauder Mason (2020). Mason's World Dictionary of Livestock Breeds, Types and Varieties (sixth edition). Wallingford; Boston: CABI. .